


Under a Garland of Stars

by Missy



Category: Evil Dead (Movies)
Genre: Community: schmoop_bingo, F/M, Handfasting, Wedding Night
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-05
Updated: 2010-07-05
Packaged: 2017-10-10 09:51:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/98347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missy/pseuds/Missy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After having married Sheila at swordpoint, she and Ash honeymoon in a cave, where he wonders if the bond might not be as forced as originally thought.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Under a Garland of Stars

**Author's Note:**

> The handfasting prayer Sheila recites was written by Larkspur, and comes from: http://www.ladyoftheearth.com/handfasting/handfasting.html . Written for schmoop_bingo, prompt: Wild Card (I chose Marriage: Wedding Night).

And so he slew the dragon, and the fair maiden was his, but he didn't want her – or so he claimed. For him, it was time to do what every cowboy movie said was the right thing and ride away while he still had the courage.

But in the movies, the girl didn't stand there crying, looking at him as if he were the whole world.

And she didn't have a father with a sword who demand the cowboy marry the rancher's daughter.

Sheila had been guilty yet awfully happy to become his wife, and Ash didn't quite know how he felt as he watched her mother pack an impromptu trousseau (what did one wear to a country that hadn't been discovered yet?). The women around here were proud of Sheila, jealous and afraid, too. Some wept as Ash glowered over her shoulder, helping her onto a horse and riding off to the caves.

Her mother hadn't approved of a honeymoon in the caves, but it was a practical necessity. Sheila helped him gather dry wood for a fire, and watched as he built it with his old pocket lighter.

She watched tentatively, her back to the wall. She could probably sense his conflicted emotions. "Shall we sleep?" she asked him.

"We're gonna have plenty of time to do that tomorrow," Ash pointed out. He slumped down next to her.

Ash wasn't really mad at her, none of it was really her fault, but he couldn't admit it.

"Ash? I am sorry."

"What for?"

"Ye clearly do not wish to be yoked to me." Well, that was a horrible way to put it.

"I didn't say I minded it, did I? It's just complicated."

Sheila closed her eyes. "Would ye rather I awakened earlier than thee?"

He frowned. "I told ya, it's not your fault." He didn't want to explain anything about quickie divorces, or even puzzle out if he really wanted one.

"This is no facile problem, Ashley. We require a solution."

"We've got six hundred years to think about it," Ash growled, rubbing his temples. "Let's just rest, and look at the fire."

They both glared into the orange flames. "That's the only thing that ain't changed," he said suddenly.

Sheila glanced at him.

"Fire. It's the same. The damn rocks, the dust on the ground – that's what it's like where I come from."

"Ye live in a cave?"

He shook his head. "I used to go camping when I was a kid. When I went to the cabin it was the first time I'd been out in the woods in years." Sheila placed a comforting hand on his wrist and he gently shook it off.

"Surely there must be a tree that would not viciously turn on thee," she remarked.

Ash just stared into the fire. At that, Sheila stood.

"I must bathe," she declared. "Ye said there was a freshwater pool at the back of the cave?"

"Take a left at the fork," Ash instructed her; he wasn't surprised to note that her maids had packed linens for their journey, and rosewater soap.

Ash sat there, warming his hands (both of them, he realized suddenly) for a good ten minutes before he decided Sheila was being too quiet. He took the fork to the freshwater pond.

The sight of her nudity struck him still. Sheila had lightly tanned skin (a "ruddy courting wren," her mother had called her) that he knew, without a doubt, was soft to the touch; she was a natural swimmer, her toes barely cresting over the top of the water and her arms elegantly cutting through it. Ash had spent hours of his youth staring at beautiful girls, Sheila was the latest. He realized she was the first one he could watch without pause, for the rest of his life.

She let out a shriek upon seeing him. "Letcher," she called.

"It's not lechery – you're my wife," he pointed out.

"Wert we married from the first night?" she hid her softly-curved breasts beneath the water.

Maybe, but he wasn't about to tell her that. "I'm not thinking about the wedding, baby," he said.

She straightened her shoulders. "Do ye think I wouldst give my virtue freely to a man who has not declared his true love?"

Ash snorted. "I married you. That's love."

Without batting an eye, she abruptly stood up, water pouring from her nude form, walking toward him. "I do not know if ye have love for me. Thy kind words were false, and I would not have only such base lust."

Ash wondered when he'd become so attached to her. Perhaps it was her fearlessness, or her dependence on him for protection; the way she kissed him in front of the fire, or that she'd come back from death for him. The way she had stood up to her father in his name or when she threw herself in front of a sword aimed at his chest. It was everything she was and might be. "This might just be love. Is that enough for now?"

She stared up at him. "Truly?"

"Basically."

She wrapped her wet arms around his neck, dripping water down the front of his borrowed shirt.

"Then give me thy love, my lord," she demanded.

He pressed her to his chest, his lips on hers, complying.

***

The following morning, they counted drops in the chassis of his old car, saying what he was quite sure was the words. As the effects of the potion began to take hold, she asked for his hand.

She removed her hair thong and bound his left wrist to hers; then she recited:

_ "Marry me under a garland of stars,  
Conifers silent witness  
To night wind's echoed vows.  
Bearing our promises upward  
Through universal whiteness  
To the sepulcher of God.  
Touch me once for all time,  
All lives that are to be...  
Our love enshrined.  
Marry me under the gaze of stars.  
Celestial concourse, bless our joy  
Now and forevermore..."_

"What the hell was that?" he asked, untying their wrists.

"We are handfast," she said, sleepily burrowing against his chest. "I wished to be doubly married, for such bonds are hard to break. Ye won't break it, Ashley. I have faith."

As Ash drifted off to sleep, her warm body next to his, he realized that she had a hell of a lot of faith in him.

He only hoped he wouldn't screw that up in the future.

THE END


End file.
